Office Hours – May 19, 2017

Recording of Office Hours hosted by Chris Davis on May 19, 2017.

Transcript

Chris Davis:Computer. You can always submit your questions beforehand to me personally at cdavis@activecampaign.com or just reply to the confirmation you’ve received when you registered for this webinar. Let me do this for all of my new audience. Let me redo that.

Again, welcome. I will not stop welcoming you from Thrive because [00:00:30] I had a really good time yesterday. What I wanted to do on this Office Hours is walk everybody through the automations that I presented on the Thrive webinar because they are a great example of how to leverage this platform. These automations will be available via Thrive when they publish a replay. If you have any issues with them, please don’t hesitate to jump back on Office Hours and talk through it, or you [00:01:00] can always reach out to a support agent. This will be a good time to differentiate between Office Hours and support. If there’s something broken that’s not working as anticipated, that’s a support ticket. Like if an email isn’t being sent or you’re having troubles with the formatting, that’s a support ticket. Office Hours is really more so for you to think through strategy and learn how to use more of the [00:01:30] automations.

[Chantee 00:01:34]: can you post the other links? Yes. They should be in the chat right above you, Chantee. Chantee, I think I saw you on the webinar yesterday in fact. I’d post them again right now though because I don’t want you to have to search for them here. Well, Chantee, welcome, welcome. I’m glad you’re here. I’m going to send them directly to you. I just sent the [00:02:00] links to you, Chantee. I hope I’m saying your name right, Chantee or Chantee. I thought I recognized your name. I was trying not to call everybody out because I recognize a lot of names but yours did stand out and again I’m glad to have you on.

What I wanted to do was provide a bit of insight. Oh, great. I’m pronouncing it right. This is my day. This is my Friday. I wanted to walk everybody through these [00:02:30] automations. Since I have a little more time to focus on ActiveCampaign, I wanted to take a step back and everybody in chat you’re going to be my barometer. This is an Office Hours that you can ask any basic question. One of the questions I looked at and saw in the chat yesterday was what is an automation? That was a really strong question for me because it put things in a perspective. [00:03:00] We get so used to just knowing what automations are. We just assume that when you say the word “automation,” everybody understands. People were asking things like is an automation like an autoresponder? Are they the same? Are they different? Are automations part of ActiveCampaign? I was thinking. I was like, “Wow, I never would have even thought to think like that because I’ve been using the platform for so long.”

Allow me to just help everybody understand [00:03:30] that automations are the means of providing you with actions to tie all of your marketing together. You all heard of the term “duct tape marketing” like the idea that you have all of these external pieces and functions that you’re tying together with this duct tape. That’s essentially what an automation is but a lot more beautiful and a lot more functional. You use an automation [00:04:00] to send an email, to send an internal notification, to split if else, to split a condition. All of that is done in an automation. That’s what automations are and there is a guide that we have that I will share with you all that’s literally called What is an Automation? or What are Automations? I think.

We’re working on redoing this site, too, to make it a lot more [00:04:30] search friendly which is going to be so amazing. Look at this. What are Automations? and then Simplifying Automations. These two blog posts or these two guide posts are going to be really good. Here’s What are Automations? Then here is Simplifying Automations. I put them both in there. Once you learn what automations are and how to use them, the next step is to simplify them. I cannot [00:05:00] stress the importance of building out modular, simple automations. I’m telling you, not only will it make your life easier, it eliminates and it minimizes a lot of errors you’ll see from the application.

I’ve been using this software online for a long time and sometimes really good software can break because of poor usage of it no matter how strong the software is. As a software developer in my previous life as an engineer, I know that [00:05:30] if you can break things up, any software is going to be able to execute it a lot easier. That’s the background. I wasn’t able to provide that on the webinar yesterday but that’s the background to my modular approach. I know on the backend of the code is very, very much stronger when it executes small chunks. It’s called batch processing. That’s the technical term for it. The thing is most people don’t have that technical understanding and [00:06:00] mindset to build that way. But, if you build that way, you’re going to see this application work really well for you.

Chantee says, “Yup. Modular is how I program.” Yes. The cat is out the bag. I am an engineer, a programmer at heart. That approach I bring to this and now you all get to leverage it. You all get to leverage it for your benefit. Oh, you are, too. Okay, great. You all get to leverage it for your benefit in building out these automations.

[00:06:30] Now we know what an automation is. An automation is a means of tying all of the available actions that we provide to you together for what? To move forward, to progress your business forward to a particular goal. The goal could be to make the sale or the goal could be something else. Whatever that goal is, it’s up to you. Let me walk through this and the example … Let me see. Hold on. [00:07:00] Hold on. I’ve got to go through this. I have to show you all. I know this is going to be a bit of review for a lot of you that were on the webinar yesterday. But, listen, I have time today to really talk through it and break everything down. I didn’t feel like I was rushing too fast through everything yesterday but we were on a time schedule so I wanted to be mindful of that and not go too long. Plus, I didn’t want to hijack [00:07:30] the show. I thank you all for your patience with me yesterday.

This was the example. You have this consultant. Maybe a Facebook ad strategist or whatever. They have a quiz that you access from their homepage. Their homepage was a landing page. They’re driving traffic there and they say, “Hey, I need to know if I should implement a Facebook strategy or whatever.” They go here to this quiz. You can see there’s multiple [00:08:00] options that you can select in this quiz. In fact, let me show you. Let me say I’m a eCommerce store owner. Then it’s going to ask me if I’m running Facebook ads. I’ll say yes. Then am I using retargeting? I’ll say no because I’m really just getting started and I can say I’m just getting started.

Now, at this point, I’m finished with the quiz but it’s not until I enter my name and email that these results are sent to ActiveCampaign. Thrive is holding all of this information [00:08:30] just waiting for me to click this blue button. When I click the button, it sends all the information there. I have not yet clicked the button so it’s not going to be sent. I just wanted to show you that there are multiple questions so that these automations will make sense to you.

The first thing I wanted to do was I wanted to create what’s called a … I call it a master sort because controller was a little technical. Again, I’m going to go [00:09:00] technical. When I was learning about computers and building microprocessors, you had your master hard drive and your slave hard drive, and the master essentially controlled all of the traffic coming into and out of the storage on the computer. When it needed to pass it to the slave drive, it would but the master controller … We can look at the … What is it called? Circuit board itself, [00:09:30] the CPU, the central processing unit. Everything goes through that and it acts like a traffic officer, a traffic cop that says, “Hey, you go this way. You go that way. You go this way. You go that way.” They’re called controllers but I didn’t want to get too technical so I called it my master sort function, but this is what I will call a master controller. This is when you complete that quiz, everybody gets added to this automation. See that? Tag [00:10:00] is Thrive finished Facebook strategy quiz. This becomes my master controller.

What you can see is I’m directing traffic. I’m saying, “Hey, you go here. You go here. You go here. You go here.” That’s all this is for. This is just to direct my contacts. If I use the high school analogy, I’m the hall official or the hall monitor making sure all the kids get to the correct [00:10:30] classes. Hey, you go to that class. Go to that class. Chantee says, “Main program routine with subroutines.” Yes. Yes, absolutely. Thank you all for letting me be a bit technical today. This is a little bit my wheelhouse. We have the hall monitor that’s like, “Hey, you go into this automation.” If yes or no, you go this way. Yes or no, you go this way and that way.

This is one automation that handles the traffic and the sorting of our contacts. [00:11:00] Let’s talk through this. Thrive quizzes added. This tag is added. Then I remove it. For my Thrive users out there, this move can be eliminated and simplified because when you’re in Thrive, you have the ability to select whether you want to add a tag or if you want a form submitted. Me personally, I would always use a form submission because that way if we use a form submission, we don’t have to worry about removing [00:11:30] a tag and everything.

Look what happens when you create. I’m just going to create a form. Watch this. Just watch this. Forgive the background, everybody. It got really loud really quick here. It comes in waves. I’m going to put them on my master list. Also, if the background noise is distracting to any of you, let me know and I can start doing these in a quiet room. But, I like the organic feel for [00:12:00] you all to hear the hustle and bustle so it just makes it a little more informal. If it’s hard for you to focus under that, just let me know. Let me know. You can email me, let me know and I’ll honor your request and we could do it in a more quiet setting.

Anyway, I’m going to create this form. I don’t need any of that because essentially Thrive is just going to pass all of this information over. What I’m going to do is on that first screen [00:12:30] is where you saw I could set up to subscribe to a list but I’m also going to do this. I can add a tag here. If I can add a tag in ActiveCampaign, that’s less I have to do in Thrive. I can have this tag added every time someone fills out the form. But, honestly I wouldn’t need it because I’m going to use this form as the start trigger for that.

Here’s why you’ll want to use that form. Here’s why because if I go back [00:13:00] and say submit a form, Thrive quiz, I can do it now. Just set it to whenever they submit the form. Look at how easy that is to allow people to come in here multiple times. At that point, I don’t need this and I don’t need that. Look at how it simplifies the automation even more. They submit the form. I can say, “You [00:13:30] can only take this quiz once or you can take this quiz multiple times.” That’s the form option in Thrive when you’re integrating.

Now, they’re going to enter in what I call a Personalizer automation. This is actually one of my favorite automations. I do this often and I just decided to give it a name and the name resonated with the audience. Everybody was like, “Hey, where can I get the Personalizer from?” That was a really good feedback from you. Excuse me. Let’s look at what’s happening [00:14:00] here. Let me go to my automations, Thrive quizzes. The Personalizer is right here. Watch this, everybody. Now remember these are my questions that I’m asking. What I want to do is I want to personalize my follow up communication not only with their first name. Listen, everybody. That’s the cheap way. Ask for somebody’s first name and then use it in a email. Anybody can do that. Anybody [00:14:30] can do that.

What if I can call out what type of business you have? Beyond saying your first name, what if I could say, “Hey, Jill. Since you’re an eCommerce owner, I figured you’d like this.” In that same email sent to John that says, “Hey, John. Since you’re a local business owner, I figured you’d like this.” Look how much more personal that is. That’s my goal with the Personalizer. You can use multiple personalizers throughout a single automation. [00:15:00] It’s just what data do you want to send to a custom field so that you can use it in the communication going forward because since Thrive only integrates at a tag level, there’s a broken link where they’re like, “Well, I can’t merge tag data into emails.” You’re absolutely correct. That’s where the Personalizer comes in.

The Personalizer essentially, since it doesn’t have a start trigger because remember we’re [00:15:30] playing hall monitor, hey, you go this way, they’re going into here. They’re being told to go here so they don’t need a trigger and it’s looking for the tag value. If the tag is eCommerce, I’m updating a custom field called business type to eCommerce owner. If it’s local business, I’m updating it to local business owner. If it’s service, I’m updating it to professional service provider. If it’s nothing, I’m just saying you’re a business owner. Chantee, in the term that you mentioned, this would be a subroutine [00:16:00] of the main routine, the main program which is my sorting function.

By doing this, I can now use automation. Remember, I told you what automations were. Automations were the process of taking all of these actions and allowing them to work together as a … I’m officiating the actions, all of these actions. Part of that is I need to transfer tag data [00:16:30] into a custom field. That’s what this Personalizer automation does. Now, based on the tag value, I could update a custom field. Now, I can create personalized email followup. I can start using conditional tags. I mean, conditional content. I’ll show you how to do that here if we have time. I’m going to keep going at this pace. Anybody please tell me to slow down. Ask any clarifying questions [00:17:00] you need.

Now that we’ve got the personalization down, everybody goes here. When they submit the form, everybody gets personalized because we know that we will have their data. They can’t enter this without completing the quiz and they can’t complete the quiz without telling us what their business type is. We know that.

[00:17:30] Chantee, let me put your question up. Everybody who’s joining us, we’ve got a different group, a very unique group today which I’m glad. I did a webinar yesterday with Thrive and a lot of those attendees are here today. Thank you for listening to me and coming so I can answer your questions. I got a question yesterday about the use of tags versus custom field. Is the only reason to have both is for the use of the value in the email? Otherwise, it seems like a duplication [00:18:00] of effort to keep both that have the same values or am I missing something? You nailed it. You nailed it. The only reason I’m using this Personalizer right here is because I need to get that value into a custom field. You can display custom field. You can’t display tags. Tags are internal only. Custom fields are internal and external.

Another thing, too, I mentioned [00:18:30] this, everybody, there are other platforms that only integrate at a tag level so you may find yourself doing it the reverse. You may find yourself taking custom field values and adding tags because a third party needs to see tags. It can go either way. Chantee, absolutely. You are correct. It is duplication. It’s only a necessary [00:19:00] duplication if you’re not going to use it in the email followup. If you’re not going to use their business type in your email followup, then you don’t even need this automation. Yup. You’re right on the money with that one.

Now, everybody goes through here which it’s optional. I can do that. I can just put right here optional. Just making my notes. Then I say, “My [00:19:30] main qualifier is are you making over a 100K?” I need to know that because only people making over a 100K, look at that yes, are going to get my high end consultation offer. You’ve got to be making over a 100K. If you’re not, then I’ve got two offers for you but I need to know if you’re running Facebook ads or not.

A quick recap everybody. I’m going over the automations I did [00:20:00] for Thrive Themes yesterday and their quiz building example. In that case, if you’re making over a 100K, I’ll send you my high end offer. If you’re not making over a 100K and you’re running Facebook ads, I’m going to sell you my course because my course is going to show you how to be more effective with those Facebook ads. If not, I’m going to give you my eBook. Honestly, as a marketer, you see the progression. If they matriculate all the way down to no, [00:20:30] the hopes are that after the eBook, they enroll in the course. Then after they complete the course, they’re ready for the high end consultation. That’s how I would look at this from a strategic standpoint.

Let me offer this to you all as an idea as well. Remember automation is the means of taking your processes that you’re already doing [00:21:00] in your business and systemizing them and executing them with technology. By systemizing your processes, I mean grouping like procedures into one function. This process is what I would call the identification or qualification process. This is a process that you’re going to go through manual or automated.

Let’s talk about the manual version of this though because that’s [00:21:30] all automation is. It’s a mirror of what you’re doing manual. If you’re not doing it manually, if you just want to start out automating and not do anything manual, you’re doing it wrong. An automation is a mirror of your manual efforts. If you think about a mirror, a mirror doesn’t really have to work too hard. Once you’re in front of it, it’s going to reflect point blank. There’s no processing involved. [00:22:00] When you have an automation that is mirroring your real life processes, all they would do is run. That’s what they’ll do. They’ll just run. They’ll just do what they’re supposed to do. If you’re very aware of your processes, it’s going to put in a position to be a more stronger automation builder.

Look at this. Let’s look at my manual process. Let’s say I’m out at a networking event and I’m in a room of small business owners and I’m like, “Man, I know there are some opportunity in this room [00:22:30] but I need to figure out who I should be talking to.” Casually, I’ve got a drink or maybe a snack, hors d’oeuvre, whatnot. I say, “How you doing?” It doesn’t really matter the order in which I ask these questions. I really want to ask how much money you’re making but that may be a bit much. Maybe there’s a barometer in the room the lets you know … Maybe everybody in the room with a certain badge is making over a certain amount [00:23:00] of money. That’s my first barometer. What if everybody with the blue badge is part of the 100K and up club in this networking event and everybody with a red badge is just getting started? Now, in your mind, what did you just do? You just said, “Everybody in blue, I’m talking about my high end consultation.” Just off the top, no question, because you’re qualified.

Now, the red people, if I get caught up talking to somebody with the red badge, I’m not discriminating but [00:23:30] you got the red badge. I’m going for the blues. They have a red badge. I’ll talk to them. Would I not waste my time if I talk to everybody with a red badge about my high end consultation? That would be a waste of my time, would it not? For those people, I want to know, “Hey, how are you doing? Are you running Facebook ads in your business yet?” That’s a lot easier question to ask. They’re like, “No, we’re not running them yet.” “You know what? I get it. It’s tough. I know. I was trying to figure it out myself. The second I figured it out, I knew people [00:24:00] weren’t going to figure it out so I wrote a book about it.” “Oh, really? You wrote a book?” “Yeah, absolutely. I got a book da da da da.”

You’d sell them the eBook or tell them about your eBook and maybe there’s a way for you to sell it to them in an automated fashion knowing that after they get the eBook, they’ll have the option. They’ll enroll in the course. After enrolling in the course, they have the option for the high end consultation. You turn a local networking event, the people that you meet there to potential year clients. Maybe it takes 12 months for them to be a client at the high end, [00:24:30] but the goal is you’re working the room. You’re working the room, everybody. Now, you go home and sign up for ActiveCampaign. All you need to do is be able to put that process in the machine. It can do it automatically for you online to a much wider audience because you got tired. You had a few drinks. You had some hors d’oeuvre and some steak and you’re like, “Look, I’m ready to go home.” Automation doesn’t go anywhere. It’s [00:25:00] not going home. It will stay up. It will keep working. When you sleep, it doesn’t get thirsty, hungry, none of that but you have to know what you’re doing first.

This automation, though it seems simple, this is a very strong representation of a powerful process that you can implement manual or automated. I want you all to think like that. Everything that you’re doing in ActiveCampaign should be a reflection of what you’re doing in real life which means if you’re talking to somebody in real life, there’s [00:25:30] no reason why you can’t talk to them like they’re in your automation. These if else conditions are literally questions that you can ask somebody. Hey, how’s business? How’s business this year? What if they just volunteer? Oh, it’s going great. We’re already in six figures. We haven’t even cleared the second quarter. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. High end consultation. Somehow I’m going to find a way to talk about the high end consultation. [00:26:00] That’s how we remove the mysterious out of automation. Make it real, everybody. Don’t try to do something in ActiveCampaign that you wouldn’t do yourself. I think that means you’re either a perpetrator, or a hypocrite, or maybe both.

Katrina says, “Such a great way to know your audience and cater your messaging. Love it.” Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. That is how you get to know [00:26:30] your audience. I’m not one of those people that are going to tell you, “Hey, look. Get ActiveCampaign and hide behind your computer forever. Never talk to humans. Just build automations.” No, no, no, no. I wish could meet all of you in person like just after this hit a button and I’m there with you talking because you should very much … If you’re not that type of person, get somebody on your team that’s a people person and let them talk. Just make sure they have all their questions.

Now, we know [00:27:00] what we’re asking. We work the room. Now, we’re going home and saying, “Look, that worked really well. I call these five high end clients so 10 courses and two eBooks. If I could just do that more without having to go to all of these meetings.” Now, we’re talking about automation. Now you’re going here and this is exactly what you said, “Hey, how’s business?” That’s what this is to me if the tag is this over 100K. This translates to, hey, how is business? Their response [00:27:30] is, “Great,” which means yes. Or, “Just getting started. It’s still rough.” Then, if it’s great, let’s look at this high end consultation real quick. These are really basic automations.

Yes, Katrina. yes. In the high end consultation, I’m going to send them an email and what I did on the webinar is something that I want you all to do often is visualize [00:28:00] the funnel experience. They just completed the what? They’ve just completed the quiz. They see their results. They put their email address in to see the results. They’re reading the results and they’re interested. At this point, maybe they want to move forward with you and they don’t know how. They go into their email and what do they have? Schedule your consultation. Excuse me.

You just answered the question that your effective marketing brought to their attention is how do I take the next step? The [00:28:30] email says it all. Schedule your next consultation. Don’t even think about it. Just open this email. I’m guiding you. You’re literally holding their hand through the process. You’re not scamming them or trying to get over or send this crafty email. The subject line to this email could literally be your next step. Schedule a consultation. You don’t have to go searching online to a blogger, the 10 most persuasive headline that you should be using in your marketing. Are you serious? [00:29:00] Just think about the funnel experience. This person who’s receiving this email, they were on your site for one so that shows intent. Two, they finished the entire quiz. That shows there’s a hole there, something that they want to learn, and they’re making over a 100K. Offer them a consultation. Don’t over complicate this, everybody. Offer them the next step easily.

Now, we’re going to wait a day. I [00:29:30] had three days but I made it a little shorter. I’ll be a little aggressive. We’ll wait a day and then we’re going to ask … Remember anytime we see this, if else, or the yes, no, it’s question. The question here is did you schedule it or what? Hey, did they schedule? If they did, then you just send an automation. We’re done. The whole purpose of this automation is to get them to schedule a consultation. If they don’t, you’re going to send them an email reminder. Say, “Hey, look. I’m still ready if you are.”

[00:30:00] Every email that you send can be more personalized because it’s telling more of a story even though they didn’t do anything. Even in their inaction, it’s showing you action. I should say even in their inaction, it’s exposing their behavior to you because we want to respond to people’s behavior. At this point, it may seem like we don’t know a lot but, yes, we do know a lot. Think about what we know. Hey, I know at least yesterday I sent you [00:30:30] an email. I know on that same day, you completed a quiz. That’s true for every single person who gets that email. That’s true. It can’t not be true, everybody. They had to have gone that path.

One way of capturing information is just asking people. Hey, what do you like? What are you doing? That’s one way to ask. Another one is to pay attention to what they do and where they’re at. [00:31:00] At this point, you could be very targeted. Hey, Jon. Yesterday, I sent you an email to get you for a free consultation because I know as an eCommerce owner, seasonal sales can be really hard. That’s why you should really be leveraging the power of Facebook ads and I’m really excited to go through that. I don’t want to bother you but here’s that link again just in case you lost it. If it works better for you, here’s my number and you can call me directly. [00:31:30] You can literally write that email right here and it will be so personal to that person. I guarantee it would have a high engagement and conversion rate. I guarantee it and I’m not even a copywriter. What I’m doing is I’m speaking to their journey. That’s what I’m doing. I’m just speaking to the journey and where they’re at.

I have wait one month in here because someone brought it up. It will say wait a month. Then if they haven’t done anything, [00:32:00] notify. Notify me that, hey, reach out to this person. It’s been a month. They haven’t taken action. Essentially what’s missing from here is actually a goal. I don’t want to end this automation. I didn’t catch that yesterday.

What’s missing here is the goal. Scheduled consultation. [00:32:30] This goal is actually going to change the entire schedule. It’s going to change the entire automation now because I don’t really need the if else. We’ll talk about that later. Schedule consultation.

“Are goals available on all plans?” Chantee asked. Yes, Chantee. They are available on every plan. [00:33:00] From free trial on, you can use goals. If you get stuck, there’s also … Remember, bookmark this site. It’s our Learn site and you can learn about essentially all of our features here at a very one-on-one … Some of these are a little advanced but for the [00:33:30] most part all of them are really basic. Jenny, we should have advanced tags, too, in the back like advanced, beginner, intermediate for the content. These are all very one-on-one, easy for you to follow. Look at this. Getting started with SMS. A lot of you didn’t know that we have the ability to send SMS messages from within automations. It’s all there. Did I put the link in it? Yeah. I put the link it.

A goal is [00:34:00] three functions in one. Jump, wait and convert. All three of those actions are in one. When this goal is achieved, what’s going to happen is no matter where they’re at, they’re going to jump to it. They won’t get this notification if they schedule their consultation within a month. Like I said, that’s why I wouldn’t really need this if else because if they’re waiting for a day and they schedule the consultation, they’ll jump all the way down here and achieve the goal. That’s why it doesn’t matter. [00:34:30] Perhaps it makes more sense honestly to do it this way, to move it here. I’m just being picky now. I’m being a perfectionist. That’s what I’m being. Maybe this reads a little easier for everybody because it says, “If yes, then they schedule the consultation.” But to do that, I don’t want it be below the contact’s position. I want it to be able to be achieved anywhere. Even if they’re down here, they [00:35:00] can jump over here.

When I look at the goal now, that reads to me. It says, “If they schedule, then this goal is true.” If not, you’re going to go down here and, at any point that you schedule, you’d be yanked up over here and say, yes, you schedule. That may be a easier way for people to visually look and see how the functionality of this automation is.

Look at that. We’re going to send out a couple reminders. At this point, everybody, this [00:35:30] is all automated. Your website is essentially filtering and qualifying leads for you and following up with them with respect to the input that they’re giving you. Nobody is who is under 100K is learning about your high end consultation. They don’t even know you do it. You could have two friends that have two separate businesses but they both opted in to your quiz and one of them says, “Hey, did you opt in to the quiz? Did you see that amazing high end [00:36:00] consultation?” They’re like, “No, I saw an eBook.” “Are you talking about the same person?” That’s actually a conversation you want to have happen with your marketing. People should be saying, “No, I didn’t get that. What do you mean?” That should be the case. You shouldn’t be able to get 20 people from your list in one room and they all say they got the same thing. The experience should be personalized, very much personalized.

[00:36:30] That was the high end consultation. Then if they had the Facebook tag, if they were running ads, they get the online course and the eBook. These two are your basic drip campaign. Your drip campaign. You look at it. It’s a few emails. I hope this is the one I have the wait states in. It’s not. Let me show you the one that have the wait states in. Essentially you come in here, three emails spread [00:37:00] out by a day. Again, there’s that goal. If they purchased a book, they’re pulled out of the sequence so they don’t get any emails because again we don’t want … At email one, they purchase. We definitely don’t want them the next day to get email two telling them to purchase again. That’s how people refund and that’s how people unsubscribe and customers can no longer receive your communication. That’s what a goal would do here. That is it. [00:37:30] These are the automations that I showed everybody yesterday.

Start thinking about your business in terms of questions. If you could ask two to three questions that would tell you very accurately … If you could ask three questions [00:38:00] that very accurately could identify which box or which room that lead should exist within your business, what are those three questions and where should you be asking them? I’ll tell you where. One is you should be asking them in person. Two, you should be asking them on your website.

I will be very skeptical if somebody who has an automation or any form of online form asking for information that they would never ask for in real life. I would be extremely skeptical of [00:38:30] that type of business, extremely skeptical. It’s like, well, why do you need it here but you can’t use it in real life? If anything, ask me in real life. You’ll get further. With automation in place, I think they lose the perspective of how valuable personal touch still is. It’s extremely valuable. If you look me in my eyes and tell me something, it’s a lot stronger connection [00:39:00] than if you typed in an email and sent it to me. It’s just stronger. I’m not saying that email is bad but let’s keep everything in its proper perspective.

Sometimes you could be selling something and witnessing terrible conversion rates only because your audience values hearing your voice. If that were the case and you knew that every time you let someone in your audience hear your voice via a phone call and you made $2,000, $3,000, [00:39:30] I don’t know too many business people that are not okay with making a $3,000 phone call. I just don’t. I don’t know of any.

Some words of wisdom I would give you all is you see how simple this was. Let me not say simple. Let me say straightforward. You see how straightforward this was. I can look at this automation and within minutes I can see what’s going on. [00:40:00] I cannot stress how important it is to keep things simple just like this automation. You’re not going to find anything that I build overcomplicated. Yes, I do some advanced things. People on here are my witness. I do some advanced things in ActiveCampaign.

Let me tell you the ratio of advanced things I do. The ratio is like 10 to 90 or 95 to 5. For every advanced thing that I do, I [00:40:30] have 50 or more non-advanced things that work much, much more and operate and handle a lot more contacts. I do not like to build my business or automations on complexity at all. If anything, I would rather err on the side of simplicity and lose a lead than be advanced and not gain any leads. [00:41:00] I don’t want to get so advanced in this automation right here that when someone does opt into it they just die. They get lost. Some of this branching, I can’t figure out what’s going on. I would hate that.

At the same time, if I had this very simple lead, this very simple automation and perhaps someone unsubscribes early or does whatever, I’ll take that. [00:41:30] As long as it wasn’t because I overcomplicated things is what I’m saying. That’s just me personally. You are very open to adopt that way of thinking. It just keeps me up thinking like if I just would simplify things. Listen, we’re all engineers. We’re all engineers of our own business in our own funnel. Sometimes you can over engineer. I have done it many times, many times.

For those of you who are [00:42:00] new, here, let me post the link again. You can see a lot of our replays here. You can access them. I will let you know in advance. We are working on getting them transcribed and into our website so that they’re easily searchable. Right now, they’re just listed by date.

Chantee: how long [00:42:30] are the replays available for? Forever. Forever, Chantee. They are up there. The only thing that will happen is they may not exist only in Vimeo. I’m going to move them to the website. That’s the only thing. When they move to the website, everybody, like I said, they’ll have transcripts and they’ll be easier to search and that’s what you want because you may want to come back to this and say, “Oh, Personalizer.” Go to the website. Just type in the word “Personalizer” [00:43:00] and then this Office Hours recording would come up. Yup. Chantee, thank you. Cool.

I want to thank you all today for attending. We’re 10 minutes out. Like I said, I have a hard stop. I have a meeting afterwards but I am in no way trying to rob you of time. I want to open it up to any questions really specific to these automations, anything specific with the platform.

[00:43:30] Can we reach you outside of Office Hours? Chantee, yes. Yes you can. If you have a question regarding anything I covered on this Office Hours or something that’s a little foggy, feel free to shoot me an email cdavis@activecampaign.com. The only caveat I will say with that is that I am busy as you saw me on the webinar yesterday. If you can do me a favor and do the work upfront to [00:44:00] simplify the email as much as possible. That will guarantee a quicker response. Some emails I get are longer and more drawn out. That’s okay but it just takes me longer to read through it and really understand what’s going on so your response may be a bit delayed. Yeah, definitely. Simplify. That’s the key. That’s the key to ActiveCampaign and that’s the key to me.

I am a very simple person. I have my [00:44:30] advanced card in my pocket at all times. It’s like insurance. What did they say about insurance? You rather be caught with it than without it or, no. It’s like you rather have it and not have to use it than have to use it and not have it. I think that’s right. That’s how my advanced card is. I have it if I have to use it but very rarely. I admonish [00:45:00] you all to do the same.

The replays are there. These automations will be available. I am exporting them today, hopefully today. If not today, this weekend. Hannah may beat me to uploading the replay before I get the automations but they’ll be there next week.

Oh, let me show you all. Look at this. When I give you the automation, this is how you import it. I’m going to go here [00:45:30] and let’s take the Personalizer. I’m going to do share. This is the link that I’m going to give Hannah. That link will be in the member’s area or wherever it’s at. You’re going to come into your ActiveCampaign account. Everybody, this will work on a trial account as well and importing automation works on all level plans. What you want to do is go here and select “new automation.” [00:46:00] You see this button right here, import automation. That’s what you want to do and then you paste it in. You see that? Then you hit import and then you’ll go through the import wizard. See that? It’s going to ask you for all of the information that you need, that it needs to configure it. You may have to create a custom field and things like that but the wizard will walk you through it.

All of these links will be in the Thrive [00:46:30] area. But, since I copied that Personalizer, I’ll put that link in here now. How about that, huh? Personalizer. I’ll put the link in there now just so you can play around with it. The ones that I share in Thrive are going to have notes throughout the automation to help you. That will be the big difference there.

Listen, everybody. Thank you for [00:47:00] an amazing Office Hours. I really appreciate you all. This is two days, not in a row, but two days this week. Wait a minute. Was it in a row? Did I do that yesterday? Chantee, you’re very welcome. Anyway, you got a double dose of me this week. Thank you. Thank you for being here. For my regular attendees, thank you as well. You’ve got quadruple duple dose of me and you’re still not sick so that’s a good thing. Yes, thank you for attending. [00:47:30] You all have a great and amazing weekend, amazing weekend. Office Hours, the next one is Tuesday at 1 p.m. and then another one is Friday so every Tuesday at 10 … I’m sorry. I totally messed that up. Every Tuesday at 10 a.m. and every Friday at 1 p.m. is our Office Hours. Feel free to register and I will see you on the next [00:48:00] one. Everybody, have a great weekend. Again, thank you so much for attending and I’ll see you later.

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